Cross-hatch Happy...

There are reasons you'll rarely find a cross-hatched quilt these days. But I felt that I could pull it off with this very old quilt top- for several reasons. For one thing, the owner of this quilt top located it in an old barn. I do believe that a family member pieced it, but I am not sure even she knows who that might have been. She is the sweetest, dearest lady and is not a quilter herself, so she isn't going to sniff and get her nose out of joint when each tiny purple block isn't perfectly dissected. Some people get a little touchy if you were to suggest that their blocks might not be perfectly square- even if you stress to them that it is often the weave of the fabric that causes this. Jeanie just couldn't care less. She gave me this quilt a few months ago, saying, "Oh honey, if you can't get to this for a couple years that's fine by me and you know I won't care a bit if it doesn't turn out nice." It was stained from time- and time in the barn. She had washed it, but there are still some dark spots, but I still think it's charming. The fabrics are linen and satin- the second factor which led me to cross-hatching. There wasn't high contrast between the lilac and the "white" so that in the places where each piece wasn't crossed perfectly, it wasn't going to scream, "I'm a failure!" The linen was very stable, and the satin... well, I worked around it and I think it turned out lovely. I'm not sure where one finds exact same shades of lilac in both satin and linen, but she managed. The white is very close to an Irish linen. The third reason I thought of cross-hatching was because the alternate blocks were such yummy empty spaces... You can't tell from the photo, but each corner square in the alternate blocks are appliqued. And these were no where near square, but we worked with 'em. The entire quilt was hand-pieced, so it made sense to applique the four small squares in each alternate block.

The last reason I choose to cross-hatch,
was that I was feeling particularly ornery and I wanted to. As good a reason as any, I suppose. I love how the quilting adds a completely new deminsion to this quilt- the batting she choose was high loft and while I would have chosen a cotton, the high-loft does look pretty. I like this quilt pattern- I might need to make one, myself. A 15 patch and then those alternate blocks with the little squares in the corners- not appliqued. Ahh... so many quilts, so little time.